Introduction to Theory

Procedural Argumentation

Theory is a procedural argument on how debate works and how it should be done. Essentially, it argues that because of some reason, whatever the opponent did is bad and illegitimate, therefore their argument should be dropped, or they should lose the round as a whole. Theory is usually read to uphold norms and check abuse (something that could skew the round). 

The layout of a theory shell is relatively simple. First comes the interpretation, which is the rule that the judge should adopt. For example, you could say “Interpretation: Debaters must disclose affirmative frameworks, framing, and all advantages and advocacy text thirty minutes before round.” If someone is fighting against a shell read against them, they’d usually read a counter interpretation, such as “Counter interp. Debaters do not need to disclose any part of the affirmative 30 minutes before the round.”

Then, you’d read the violation, which is what the opponent did to violate the interpretation you want to uphold in the round. In this case, you’d usually insert a screenshot or something that shows the opponent refusing to give you the requested parts of the affirmative case. If you’re refuting a shell, you’d usually say there’s no violation under a] the normal interpretation of the shell and/or b] your counter interpretation. 

Standards

Then, you’d move on to the standards. Standards are essentially your warrants as to why your interpretation is good for debate, upholding key parts such as fairness, education, clash, and predictability. Some examples of standards for this interpretation could be:

Clash – New affs incentivize surprise tactics where debaters break new obscure ACs which rely on rarity and lack of preparation to win. Clash outweighs because it’s intrinsic to debate – anything else makes debate a monologue indistinguishable from speech events. If someone runs a new extremely obscure advantage on a topic then its key to be able to test it with atleast like 30 mins of research to garner knowledge on it – otherwise we resort to generics and neg ground becomes concessionary to the good will of the aff, skewing and destroying the educational value of debate and depth

Aff Quality—not disclosing encourages new cheap shot affs. If the aff is easily defeated by 20 minutes of research, it should lose! Means the shell is a prior sequencing question to every 1AC argument since we weren’t able to engage so you shouldn’t evaluate dropped arguments or assume they’re true, so our offense uplayers tricks and 1AC paradigm issues.

Inclusion – means debaters with processing disorders or from small schools who don’t have backfiles on backfiles wouldn’t be able to prepare. Uniquely kills fairness and their ability to engage which magnifies abuse.

For a counter interpretation you’d also read standards and explain why your CI is better for debate than the opponents. 

Voters

Then come the voters. These are the things that the standards deal with and why they are important for the judge to rule on/off of. Some examples are fairness, education, and accessibility.

Fairness is a voter– A) Evaluation – even if their arguments seem true, that’s only because they already had an advantage – fairness is a meta constraint on your ability to determine who best meets their ROB. If one debater had ten minutes to speak and the other had three there would be incongruence that alters ability to judge the truth value of who wins on the AC so cross-applications don’t work B) Inescapable – every argument you make concedes the authority of fairness: i.e. that the judge will evaluate your arguments. Absent some judge-debater reciprocal relationship, they could just hack against or for you 

And finally, we have the paradigm issues. First is DTA (Drop the argument – read by people to defend against a theory shell so they don’t lose the round) v. DTD. If you’re reading the shell against someone, you’ll usually say DTD (Drop the debater) so that if you win the theory shell your opponent loses the round. Common justifications include: 1. Deterrence – Prevents reading the abusive practice in the future since it’s not worth risking the loss which is k2 (key to) norm setting indefensible practices die out 2. TS (Time Skew) – Otherwise you’ll read a bunch of abusive practices for the time trade off.

The next paradigm issue is competing interpretations v. reasonability. Competing interpretations is a model of debate that says: “You should pick the best model of debate as a whole offered by the interpretations.” This is usually read by people who are reading the shell as offense. Reasonability says: “I shouldn’t lose the whole round/an argument just because of a slightly better interpretation, judge, use your instinct to tell if what I did was really that bad and abusive to justify losing the round/an argument.”

RVIs

Lastly, we have the RVI, which stands for Reverse Voting Issues. This is an argument saying that if you read a theory shell and lose on it to a better counter interp, then the opponent should win the round for whatever reasons (usually so that you don’t read the same shell again/spam frivolous shells until your opponent under covers one by accident). If you are reading a theory shell, you usually want to say no reverse voting issues and if you are fighting against one you say yes reverse voting issues. Keep in mind that this depends on what positions you are running, ie. If you and the opponents are running theory shells, its probably not a good idea to say yes RVIS in general unless you have specific reasons as to why the aff/neg should/shouldn’t get access to RVIS.